I tried one of those “draw something everyday” things recently, as some of you may remember, but sadly so far it’s been a bit of a failure. On the bright side though, I have been painting, which I guess sort of counts. The conclusion I often come to about these things, is that it’s often better just to get on and do what you plan to do and not talk about it or announce it first. Sometimes it seems that the telling of a thing can in fact impede its creation. You could call it the “new year’s resolution” syndrome. Where you make a resolution and in the mere stating of your intentions you are doomed to failure, as if dark forces were nefariously (never miss an opportunity to use the word “nefarious”) working against your resolve.

Obviously some intentions do need stating first. “I’m going to bake myself into a giant flan and see if I can become the first person to survive a flan drop off of Niagara falls” etc. is the sort of thing you announce first. “I’m going to draw something everyday” may just being setting yourself up for feeling a failure. Good intentions are no substitute for good actions, except perhaps in the “flan” instance.

Anyway I’m not sketching as much as I wanted, but I am dedicating more time to art. So, if your profession is based on how much time you give to it and not currently how much you earn from it, then I am now a professional artist. Hopefully sometime soon, both aspects of time and money will come into line.

No artwork to show as yet, but I did take some inspiration shots of Eastbourne seafront and pier, so thought I’d share them.

All the shots were taken on the move, but I liked the blurry shots best and have been working on a painting of similar style. Hope to post it soon.

It’s getting a bit cold for nocturnal photo shoots in the shed, so this may be last for this year, but the subject was so beautiful I thought a night shot might do it justice.

If you don’t recognise it, the little basket shaped thing in the shot is in fact a poppy, that has slowly decayed over the last few months leaving just the framework of the seed-head. The light is coming from beneath using a tiny led from some disposable thingummy or other and shone through a hole in the bench.

Still not got any actual painting done (except a door and a fireplace), but I did get to photograph these really cool water pistols that my mum gave to my three boys.

I shot them (apologies for the pun) on my phone and then adjusted the values in the Snapseed app. Oh and yes they have been played with, we have all run around the garden at some point recently shouting pew pew as we attempted to soak one another with these surprisingly effective little water pistols!

Haven’t posted for a while, as I’m still struggling with a portrait that I’m working on, so I thought I’d quickly post a couple of phone shots taken on a gallery trip to London the other day.

My friend Nick Archer is having a show at 60 Threadneedle Street in London at the moment, so we got invited up for the preview showing. Anyway, not only was it a great opportunity to spend time with Michelle and see Nick’s work, it was also lovely to see a part of London that we wouldn’t ordinarily visit. I mean, unless you work in the financial sector of the city, London Bridge and Threadneedle Street are a bit off the beaten track. In fact it’s a track only usually beaten by hand made shoes and the odd lost tourist.

But the City has a lot to offer. Poking out between the roofs of the financial sector is gilt top of Monument, a Roman Doric column to commemorate the Great Fire in 1666 and next to The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street (The Bank of England) is the impressive building of The Royal Exchange founded by Elizabeth the first and even equipped with a statue of the Duke of Wellington to boot (sorry, bad pun).

On arrival, we came out of London Bridge station with Michelle saying “Where’s The Shard? You’d think it’d be hard to miss”. It was looming behind us like an enormous monolith of glass and steel, but that’s the problem with big cities, the buildings are so large that it’s easy to miss even something as big as The Shard.

Anyway, here are the couple of tourist snaps I shot from the bridge and some of Nick’s work:

View from London Bridge.

The last one is my favourite, but at 152cm square and £16,000 I might have to make the sacrifice and let someone else buy it.

Winter seems to have come back for a visit today. It’s cold and damp and unwelcome, but it did give me a reason to hide in the shed from the cold and take a few shots. I’m still trying to understand the new camera, it has a lot more functions than my phone! But we’re slowly becoming friends and I think it may have even forgiven me for dropping it by now.

My eldest son Joe has been building a folding guitar for a school exam project and whilst helping him the other day I thought the shed might make a good place to play with the Nikon. Anyway here are a few shots of that quintessentially English of buildings, the garden shed.

With the advent of the camera phone, everyone it seems now has the opportunity to capture the images that take hold of them, capture them, on a daily basis.

For an artist this could be a little disturbing, but why should it be. Everyone should have the right to be able to create art, whether it’s with a brush, pencil or a camera phone!

So I thought, why not publish some of the photo’s I’ve taken on my phone? It’s a relatively low megapixel iPhone 3Gs, but even with it’s limited 3.2mp quality it is still capable of taking a half decent photo’.

The really cool thing about smartphone technology is that you no longer need thousands of pounds of Adobe software and a high end Mac to play with images. You can download a handful of Apps and play around to your hearts content!

I’m using Snapseed, Dynamic Light, Pic Grunger and PhotoToaster Apps (Thanks http://rubicorno.com/ for the tips). Most of which are either under £2 or free. So give it a go. Take a photo, pull it into an App and play around and have some fun! Here are some of mine:

Me and my youngest son at bedtime. Taken by Michelle, my wife.

Harveys Brewery, Lewes, East Sussex.

The Downs, Eastbourne, East Sussex

My son Ezra on a family Longboarding day out along the coast in Eastbourne.

Winter Longboarding with the family on Eastbourne seafront.

The same seafront as the shot above this one, but with minimal filtering.